It sounds as if British Sea Power were determined to shrug off those turn-of-the-millennia comparisons to Joy Division by making things harder, faster, stronger. But is it better? Questionably varied is more like it. Whereas 2008’s Do You Like Rock Music? veered toward the straight-ahead and radio ready, Valhalla Dancehall jumps around. Lean and nimble on the opening “Who’s in Control,” quirky and poppy on first single “Living Is So Easy,” and then grandiose on the sweeping 11-minute epic “Once More Now,” the album isn’t easy to stay with. Yet despite the sonic shifts, the Brighton (UK) band’s fourth proper record avoids sounding capricious. The constants are there; the group come off as authentic in their earnestness, even with lyrics (“I love your celebrity/the VPL in the SUV”) that might look slipshod on paper. But no new ground is being broken. Are the Sea Power post-punk or a rock band? It’s okay to try to be both, but not when you get caught in a rut where the wheels spin without taking you anywhere.

Brand new funk Evan Hanson and Brendon Bjorness-Murano, better known as lyricist 90Sevan and beatminer/composer Low B, teamed up just seven months ago to form Broken Ground.

Swine fever: An evening with Hunter S. Thompson Only Hunter S. Thompson could come up with a line like that; no one else had his knack for the near-Biblical proverb. Few writers outside of Madison Avenue or the New Testament can sum up a zeitgeist so cannily in a phrase.

New attitude The rock career of UK upstarts the Big Pink has been one of finding, at the intersection of sheer bloody noise and haunting melodies, the commonality of hate and love.

Sing your life Charles Spearin's Happiness Project — to be performed this Friday at the Middle East Downstairs as part of a trio of Torontonian acts — was originally just that: a project.

A band, a part My lingering qualms with Devendra Banhart's new album have very little to do with its substance and more to do with its consistency, a quality that throughout What Will We Be? seems present only in its glaring absence.

Wale | Attention Deficit It turns out there is merit behind the billion-dollar hype machine that’s been propelling Wale since he surfaced on the face of URB two years ago.

Trans Am | What Day Is It Tonight? Trans Am Live, 1993 - 2008 Trans Am are distillers of guilty pleasures, mixing fat AOR riffs with sleazy electronic accents and a propulsive attitude typically reserved for arcade soundtracks. What Day Is It Tonight? covers the DC-area band’s 20-year history with high-quality, high-energy live cuts taken from their many tours.

WHAT'S F'N NEXT? CAVEMAN | February 20, 2013 Most people are probably sick to death of Brooklyn being a hipster's paradise where dinks with moustaches tatted on their fingers drive fixed-gear bikes to Williamsburg bars to pay $6.50 for a can of PBR.